Hyrule Warriors: Hayashi Yosuke Thoughts Translated [Second Draft]

The following comes from art book that was released with the special edition of Hyrule Warriors in Japan. Since it seems that the art book will not be released outside of Japan, I decided to translate important excerpts so that Zelda fans can have a deeper understanding of the development of Hyrule Warriors. For Aonuma Eiji’s thoughts, click here.

What is your first Zelda experience?

My first experience was with “The Legend of Zelda” for the Famicon Disk System. I still remember what walls can be blown up. In “The Adventure of Link” I relied on Link’s downward stab. In “A Link to the Past” i received a brutal counter attack from the Cocos. The “Hyrule Warriors” staff have a lot of various experiences with the Zelda series, so we tried to reflect these experiences in the final product.

We didn’t ask just the project staff. We held regular meetings with various other teams inside Koei Tecmo to discuss their own Zelda experiences. With other projects, we typically ask for impressions of the game play, but with Hyrule Warriors it was different. We received a lot of feverish suggestions on what a Zelda game should have, and what we should put into Hyrule Warriors. So this game has Zelda love from not just the immediate staff, but from a lot of people.

An anecdote about design:

We had a lot of different designs of Link up until the final design of Link that you see in the game. While we wanted a design that players would quickly recognize as Link, we wanted a design that could only exist in the Hyrule Warriors universe. Considering that, we also wanted to reflect Link’s role as the captain of the Hyrule army, and to reflect his abundance of energy. So, we came up with the idea of the blue scarf. This Link is not the “cat-eyed Link” nor is he the “scarf Link”. We made a “Hyrule Warriors Link”. A design that I’m very proud of.

“Hyrule Warriors”

We were able to deliver this tongue in cheek game to everyone. We are proud to present this magnificent new game with support from Mr. Aonuma and everyone at Nintendo. Please enjoy searching every nook and cranny of this game.

I leave you with these final words: for everything hidden in the game: It’s a secret to everyone!

PushDustIn is the founder and administrator of Source Gaming. Being obsessed with the history and development of games isn’t easy. Building a reputation on his research, translations, and article write ups, PushDustIn fully encapsulates the meaning of a 'data-miner'. PushDustIn has studied Japanese for over six years, and has lived in Japan for over four. The name PushDustIn comes from a garbage can in Osaka (Push Dust In). He lives with a very spoiled cat named Kuma.